


De Profundis

by remi_wolf



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Michael "Mike" Crew Didn't Die, Morally Ambiguous Character, Possible Character Death, The End (The Magnus Archives) - Freeform, The Entities Work In Mysterious Ways, The Vast (The Magnus Archives) - Freeform, Whumptober 2020, falling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26997766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remi_wolf/pseuds/remi_wolf
Summary: The Entities are a complex weave of allegiances, of abilities and powers and creations. Whether they are one Entity, or countless, it is impossible for any human to truly understand those. The Avatar of the End, Oliver Banks, knows the inevitability of these Entities better than most, and knows that it isn't worth it to question the End and what he feels compelled to do any longer. As such, when he feels the tug to follow a tendril out of London, into a forest clearing, he obliges, unaware that he has fallen into a trap.Whumptober 2020: Day 13. Alternate Prompt 2: Falling.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16
Collections: Beguilements and Distractions, Remi's Whumptober Collection for 2020, Whumptober 2020





	De Profundis

Oliver frowned as he followed the snaking, winding tendril, confused as to why he felt compelled to follow this one, why he wanted to keep walking along it, even as it led him further and further from the city. Normally, his domain was within walking distance of his flat.  _ Normally _ , the farthest he left on these trips was to the Magnus Institute, or to Parliament on one notable occasion, or something like that, but not out into the middle of nowhere, taking a trip long enough that he wasn’t sure whether he was awake or asleep, or if there was a difference in his life anymore. The tendril seemed particularly sluggish, the blood and life and death flowing in slow pulses, enough that he knew that the End was coming, but it seemed much further away than what he normally saw with the tendrils. 

What could be in store for him, he wasn’t sure.

At least he knew it would be inevitable when he’d find out. He would find out, sooner or later, and he simply needed to continue along the tendril, ignoring the world around him in its muted despair, wondering what would happen if he decided to turn around and follow another tendril. He didn’t want to know about the others, though. He was to see the end of this, to understand what about this End was different from the countless others he inspected, and he continued his plodding pace as he looked at it. 

The end of the trail ended more anticlimactically than what he would have liked, if he was honest. For a tendril that felt so important, for a voyage so long and inevitable that he fell to his knees at the end of it, this wasn’t what he was expecting. He expected a spectacular crash, or a fight, or something. Not freshly overturned soil in the middle of the woods with the phantom aches of hundreds of deaths in the same area. He looked over everything, thinking about it before burying his hands in the soil and beginning to dig. 

One handful of wet, clay-filled soil, and then another.

The ground was still loose, without having been packed down yet, and Oliver could feel a strange panic in his chest. He needed to hurry, he needed to  _ prevent _ something, which he didn’t like. He and his End were slow, methodical, carefully inspecting the ways in which they could travel before moving, and knowing that they would always get their due in the end. 

This felt as though he was going to ruin things, that he was going to break a promise if he didn’t fix this, that he was supposed to  _ prevent _ an untimely End, rather than watch as it happened and inspect how everything went wrong. 

He kept digging, hands aching with the cold and the rocks and the debris in the soil making it difficult, but he tried to ignore it. One handful, and then another, and slowly the pile next to him grew as he slowly dug deeper and deeper into the ground. He wasn’t used to this rushed panic, and he could feel it spreading through his limbs like molten heat, bringing life to his body in a way that he hadn’t felt since that ocean voyage and how he hated. 

Soon enough, he finally felt something solid underneath his hands, pale and cool and smooth, and entirely unlike anything he had come across to that point. What it was, he wasn’t sure, and he started pushing the soil away further before his eyes widened. .

A blue eye, impossibly, irredeemably blue, snapped open, and Oliver barely had a chance to pull away in shock when he felt a hand burst from the soil and grip his wrist before he was falling. 

Oliver couldn’t manage a scream, though he had no idea whether that was terror that gripped his unbeating heart, or the fact that the air had been ripped from his lungs as he tumbled and spun through the sky. All he was sure of was the fact that the only other thing that felt solid was the hand of a dirt-encrusted man staring at him with impossibly vast blue eyes, gripping him and holding him. 

They stared at each other for a moment before the world twisted in on itself, folding and warping before he hit the ground hard, what little air was in Oliver’s lungs leaving in a gasp once more as he ignored the crack and snap of ribs hitting the ground at speeds that he should not be feeling. The pain forced Oliver’s eyes shut for a moment until he heard a shower, and he frowned, opening his eyes. 

His flat.

How had he arrived here? Why was he here?

He stood up, groaning quietly before looking around and walking over to the shower, following the trail of discarded, muddy clothes, and finally seeing a figure obscured behind the shower curtain with the water steaming.

“How do you know where I live?” Oliver coughed softly at the hoarseness of his voice, annoyed at it but the coughing hurt his ribs as they tried to knit themselves together, and he leaned against the doorframe, keeping his eyes on whatever creature of the Vast was using his shower. The smell of ozone was heavy, despite the open window bringing in a breeze of city air and the steam and soap adding further scents. 

“You wanted to get somewhere safe. Instinct, really. I just gave you a path and followed you, basically.” 

Oliver hummed softly, pressing his hands to his ribs as he tried to ignore the aches, and he took a deep breath. “You were supposed to die.”

“Assuming you left me. Thank you, for that.”

“I’m not supposed to do that.”

The man shrugged, the motion just barely visible through the fogged curtain, and Oliver sighed before turning and leaving. Clearly the man was through with words, and the conversation would happen eventually if it was supposed to happen at all. He could make tea in the meantime, and then they’d have a conversation properly. 

The tea began to grow cold as Oliver waited for the man to leave the shower, and Oliver sighed as he finished the second cup. All in due time, he supposed, but his water bill was going to be horrible, as was his heating, and he stood up to make himself yet another mug of tea to fill the time. What the End could have wanted with that man, he wasn’t sure, especially since it was clearly obvious that he was aligned with the Vast and deeply woven into the Vast’s weave. 

Oliver turned as he heard the man walk up behind him, and he put on a small smile, pointing towards the mug. “I made tea, I hope you—”

The man didn’t give Oliver a chance to respond, simply reaching out and pushing him. His eyes, so piercing blue, seemed to engulf the entire room, and Oliver barely managed to start screaming as he fell back into an endless blue void.

**Author's Note:**

> hey, hey, did you like that pun...? Oh, Oliver, I'm so sorry to do this to you and resign you to a fate of eternally falling through the void, but I love Mike a smidgen more than you, and he deserves to be saved. Hopefully everyone enjoyed this! Comments always appreciated!


End file.
